Raspberry Pi: Identify Linux distribution and release

Read Linux distribution and release

You can use “/ etc / os-release”  to retrieve  information about the installed Linux distribution and the release

cat /etc/os-release

This is what I saw

Source code

PRETTY_NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)"
NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="10"
VERSION="10 (buster)"
VERSION_CODENAME=buster
ID=raspbian
ID_LIKE=debian
HOME_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianForums"
BUG_REPORT_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianBugs"

You can also use cat /etc/issue to retrieve the name and version number

cat /etc/issue

This is what I saw

Source code

Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 \n \l

Read Linux kernel version

uname -a

This is what I saw

Source code

Linux raspberrypi 5.4.79-v7l+ #1373 SMP Mon Nov 23 13:27:40 GMT 2020 armv7l GNU/Linux

You can see the version number of the Linux kernel that comes in the third position – 5.4.79-v7l+.

The processor architecture on which Raspberry Pi runs. Recognizable in the output from my Raspberry Pi 4 as “armv71”, other Raspberry Pi hardware may return a different architecture.

If you only want the kernel version

uname -r

This is what I saw

Source code

5.4.79-v7l+

You can also use the following

ucat /proc/version

This is what I saw

Source code

Linux version 5.4.79-v7l+ (dom@buildbot) (gcc version 8.4.0 (Ubuntu/Linaro 8.4.0-3ubuntu1)) #1373 SMP Mon Nov 23 13:27:40 GMT 2020

pi os info

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Raspberry Pi hardware information Raspberry PI GPIO connector Install Apache web server on a Raspberry PI How to install Ubuntu on the Raspberry Pi